1st grade classes are 30 kids and it's a mess

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

Go over the principal's head. It's hard to hire teachers right now, but sounds like the principal is especially incompetent if they have sacrificed the first grade teachers. I bet there are a bunch of useless "coaches" walking around the school making more work for those poor teachers but not actually teaching any kids themselves. Bad principals love that.

The higher ups like them to, they think it’s support for the teachers and helps retention. Going ever higher up does nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

The parents could have gotten their kids tested and diagnosed prior to going to school and could have avoided all this “mess”. They are responsible, not the school. Children that are on the spectrum get an IA assigned to them. Diagnosed children with proper paperwork done. Kids coming from head start have this ready to go and get IAs right in kindergarten. Wish parents parents in private preschools got their homework done instead of complaining about schools

Not all

+1, I’ve had 3 on the Spectrum with an IA for about an hour a day. More violence = More IA hours in the room

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

If you have the IA's.... because umm those are hard to come by these days.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

The parents could have gotten their kids tested and diagnosed prior to going to school and could have avoided all this “mess”. They are responsible, not the school. Children that are on the spectrum get an IA assigned to them. Diagnosed children with proper paperwork done. Kids coming from head start have this ready to go and get IAs right in kindergarten. Wish parents parents in private preschools got their homework done instead of complaining about schools

Not all

+1, I’ve had 3 on the Spectrum with an IA for about an hour a day. More violence = More IA hours in the room

[Anonymous]

Kids with ASD absolutely do not get an IA automatically assigned. Not a 1:1 aide, and most of the times not even a classroom aide who focuses on the kid(s) with autism while also helping the teacher generally. It would be great if they did though. But the majority of the time it’s 30 kids in a classroom and 2-4 disruptive kids, who may or may not be autistic but who do have serious behavioral problems, and the class is disrupted on a daily basis because of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

The parents could have gotten their kids tested and diagnosed prior to going to school and could have avoided all this “mess”. They are responsible, not the school. Children that are on the spectrum get an IA assigned to them. Diagnosed children with proper paperwork done. Kids coming from head start have this ready to go and get IAs right in kindergarten. Wish parents parents in private preschools got their homework done instead of complaining about schools

Not everyone can afford the $3000-$5000 it costs to privately test their children, PP. You sound really out of touch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

The parents could have gotten their kids tested and diagnosed prior to going to school and could have avoided all this “mess”. They are responsible, not the school. Children that are on the spectrum get an IA assigned to them. Diagnosed children with proper paperwork done. Kids coming from head start have this ready to go and get IAs right in kindergarten. Wish parents parents in private preschools got their homework done instead of complaining about schools

Not everyone can afford the $3000-$5000 it costs to privately test their children, PP. You sound really out of touch.

Fcps offers free screening.

https://www.fcps.edu/registration/early-childhood-prek/early-childhood-child-find

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

The parents could have gotten their kids tested and diagnosed prior to going to school and could have avoided all this “mess”. They are responsible, not the school. Children that are on the spectrum get an IA assigned to them. Diagnosed children with proper paperwork done. Kids coming from head start have this ready to go and get IAs right in kindergarten. Wish parents parents in private preschools got their homework done instead of complaining about schools

Not everyone can afford the $3000-$5000 it costs to privately test their children, PP. You sound really out of touch.

Students might get a TA if and only if they cannot access the gen ed curriculum without one. But no, kids on the spectrum do not automatically get an aide regardless of whether they were privately evaluated or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

The parents could have gotten their kids tested and diagnosed prior to going to school and could have avoided all this “mess”. They are responsible, not the school. Children that are on the spectrum get an IA assigned to them. Diagnosed children with proper paperwork done. Kids coming from head start have this ready to go and get IAs right in kindergarten. Wish parents parents in private preschools got their homework done instead of complaining about schools

Not everyone can afford the $3000-$5000 it costs to privately test their children, PP. You sound really out of touch.

Parents will find ways to do what is best for their children. That certainly is not out of touch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

The parents could have gotten their kids tested and diagnosed prior to going to school and could have avoided all this “mess”. They are responsible, not the school. Children that are on the spectrum get an IA assigned to them. Diagnosed children with proper paperwork done. Kids coming from head start have this ready to go and get IAs right in kindergarten. Wish parents parents in private preschools got their homework done instead of complaining about schools

Not everyone can afford the $3000-$5000 it costs to privately test their children, PP. You sound really out of touch.

You are out of touch. Private screening is for people who want to keep diagnosis out of the kid’s file. Otherwise FX county offers free screening through ChildFind

[Anonymous]

And plenty of schools in FCPS have had early ES classes at 30 students for many, many years. This is not a new thing. Knowing this you have the choice of finding ways to support your kid in Public School, finding a private school, or homeschooling. each has its own challenges but you are not the first parent to have to figure out how to support your ES child with a huge class. It is pretty normal in FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

Go over the principal's head. It's hard to hire teachers right now, but sounds like the principal is especially incompetent if they have sacrificed the first grade teachers. I bet there are a bunch of useless "coaches" walking around the school making more work for those poor teachers but not actually teaching any kids themselves. Bad principals love that.

You vastly overestimate your own importance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

Go over the principal's head. It's hard to hire teachers right now, but sounds like the principal is especially incompetent if they have sacrificed the first grade teachers. I bet there are a bunch of useless "coaches" walking around the school making more work for those poor teachers but not actually teaching any kids themselves. Bad principals love that.

Go over their head to do what? Complain about how they are complying with county regulations, which you don’t like? Please…try this.

County regulations require packed classrooms? Interesting.

Grow up. County regulations set the number of kids in the fall, which require another class to be opened. By not opening a class when the enrollment is lower than the requirement to open a new class is complying with County regulations.

+1,000. So sick of supposed adults like PP being willfully ignorant and pretending it’s cute.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

Go over the principal's head. It's hard to hire teachers right now, but sounds like the principal is especially incompetent if they have sacrificed the first grade teachers. I bet there are a bunch of useless "coaches" walking around the school making more work for those poor teachers but not actually teaching any kids themselves. Bad principals love that.

You vastly overestimate your own importance.

DP

This is the 2nd richest county in the nation, filled with numerous politically connected people. You've got a ton of media savvy professionals around here, more than a few, myself included, who have been on national news on multiple occasions. We know how to work the media and can cause pressure when needed.

Fairfax isn't cow country anymore. Parents should leverage the networks they have to invoke change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

Go over the principal's head. It's hard to hire teachers right now, but sounds like the principal is especially incompetent if they have sacrificed the first grade teachers. I bet there are a bunch of useless "coaches" walking around the school making more work for those poor teachers but not actually teaching any kids themselves. Bad principals love that.

Go over their head to do what? Complain about how they are complying with county regulations, which you don’t like? Please…try this.

County regulations require packed classrooms? Interesting.

Grow up. County regulations set the number of kids in the fall, which require another class to be opened. By not opening a class when the enrollment is lower than the requirement to open a new class is complying with County regulations.

+1,000. So sick of supposed adults like PP being willfully ignorant and pretending it’s cute.

Not the PP, but an FCPS teacher and this is a case of parents reading a regulation somewhere and thinking they understand the real workings of a school. The county requirement to open a new class is literal - it means you cannot have a larger class than that. It does NOT mean you cannot have a smaller class. Funding is complicated in schools, and there is quite a bit of discretion involved in how the funds are used. Also a lot of county procedures and deadlines that make it either harder or easier at times to get more teachers and lower class sizes. The end result is that the number of kids in the actual class at the start of the year is very likely not even the number of kids that the staffing formula was based on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

The parents could have gotten their kids tested and diagnosed prior to going to school and could have avoided all this “mess”. They are responsible, not the school. Children that are on the spectrum get an IA assigned to them. Diagnosed children with proper paperwork done. Kids coming from head start have this ready to go and get IAs right in kindergarten. Wish parents parents in private preschools got their homework done instead of complaining about schools

Not everyone can afford the $3000-$5000 it costs to privately test their children, PP. You sound really out of touch.

You are out of touch. Private screening is for people who want to keep diagnosis out of the kid’s file. Otherwise FX county offers free screening through ChildFind

I think private screening is not that common - when I was a teacher, I saw it only a couple of times, and in each case it was a parent who had attempted to get services but been rejected at the school level after going through the screening. In one of those cases, the parent was nutty and the kid was not disabled, and in the other the kid just had a really unusual disability that didn't check the county's boxes.